Chapter VIII: Miss West's Christmas Adventure, 337 (10)

Others besides Bourhope had determined on making the ball a theatre of explanations. Mrs. Spottiswoode was not pleased with the aspect of things as between Bourhope and Corrie. Their affair made no advance, and the ball was the conclusion of the yeomanry weeks. The yeomen were already to all intents and purposes disbanded, and about to return, like Cincinnatus, to their reaping-hooks. Corrie was evidently not contented. She was listless and a little peevish, unless when in the company of other yeomen than Bourhope--a rare thing with Corrie, who was really a very harmless girl. But she looked elegant in her ball dress, and had always a train of admirers on such occasions. And then, of course, many men needed the spur of jealousy to induce them to take the bold leap of matrimony. Chrissy, too, had her own fears and doubts about this ball. Bourhope hitherto had only pursued her, if he had pursued her, in rather a secret manner. She would now see how he would treat her on a public occasion. His conduct would then be marked and conspicuous, and even Mrs. Spottiswoode's and Corrie's eyes would be opened to it. Then, again, he would have an opportunity of contrasting her personally with all the girls about Priorton. Chrissy gazed wistfully into the glass as she fastened her yellow scrimp old white frock, and sighed. But she did not look so much amiss as she supposed: she was young, slight, and full of subtle character. And with her scarlet coral beads twisted among her dark little turret curls and bows, there was piquancy and attraction in Chrissy. But her first purely disinterested and unbounded pleasure in the gaiety was grievously chequered, and it was to be feared the account she would carry home of her first ball to expectant Blackfaulds would be disappointing.

There were only two chaises in repair in Priorton, to convey the whole townspeople in rotation to the ball. It was thus unavoidable that some should be very early, as well as some very late. Mr. Spottiswoode, as Provost, was of course among the first after the Colonel and his lady, old country people, who stood arm-in-arm, bluff and bland, under the evergreens over the door, and shook hands with everybody, great and small--a family of pretty girls meanwhile laughing behind them.

Mrs. Spottiswoode wore a splendid bunch of white feathers tipped with straw-colour in her blue gauze turban. Even Chrissy's dazed eyes noticed that, as well as the white ribbon in Provost Spottiswoode's bottle-green coat, which pointed him out an honorary steward. But how handsome brown curly Bourhope looked in his red coat!

A strange thought came over Chrissy. She did not wish Corrie, in her white crape and French ribbons, and so tall and straight and fair, to be blighted in her beauty--no, not for a moment. But Chrissy was cruel enough to cherish a passing wish that, by some instantaneous transformation, Bourhope might be pitted with smallpox, or scarred with gunpowder, or have premature age brought upon him as with the wave of a wand--the soul within being left unchanged, however.

Mrs. Spottiswoode, unlike Chrissy, was quite alive to the practical. She remarked everything with keen eyes, and determined now to be at the bottom of the business. She should either go in and win triumphantly, or take a sudden tack and sail away with flying colours, as if she had never entertained the most distant intention of coming to close quarters, and thus give the impression that she never had any intention of promoting a match between Bourhope and Corrie.

Mrs. Spottiswoode thought Bourhope looked as if he were going to do something desperate. His first blunder had been to hand, or rather lift, Chrissy into the chaise instead of Corrie, at starting from their own door. He repeated the unaccountable blunder at the County Rooms, which compelled him to take Chrissy into the ball-room; and while Chrissy was still gazing in bewilderment and admiration at the evergreens and chalked floors, and talking, laughing couples, Mrs. Spottiswoode could scarcely believe her ears when she distinctly heard Bourhope ask Chrissy's hand for the first dance, saying that he would have engaged it before if he had got the opportunity.

Now Mrs. Spottiswoode had no doubt that Bourhope would solicit her sister Corrie for this dance, and therefore she had peremptorily forbidden Corrie to engage herself in any other quarter, even when Corrie had demurred at the certainty of the arrangement. It was very odd of Bourhope, unless he thought Chrissy would have no chance of any other partner, and wanted to spare a plain little girl's mortification at the very commencement of the evening. "That must be it," Mrs. Spottiswoode said to herself, and was consoled by Corrie's hand being immediately requested for the Colonel's nephew.

The Colonel's wife opened the ball with the most popular and oldest private for partner, and, of course, Chrissy and Bourhope stood below Corrie and the Colonel's nephew. But Bourhope and Chrissy did not mind Corrie's precedence, and were talking to each other quite intimately. Bourhope was forgetting the figure and bending across to Chrissy, though he was saying nothing particular, and speaking out quite loud. But he looked engrossed and excited. If it had been any other girl but Chrissy, Mrs. Spottiswoode would have called it a flirtation, and more than a flirtation. Chrissy looked well in her shabby dress, almost pretty indeed, in the new atmosphere. Mrs. Spottiswoode was aggrieved, disgusted in the first instance, but she would not just yet believe such an incredible contradiction to her well-laid scheme. Match-making involves so many parties, there are such wheels within wheels of calculation and resource. She glanced at Corrie, who was dancing very complacently with the Colonel's nephew, and exchanging passing words with yeomen who tried to get speech with her. In her white crape, and teeth as white, and her dimples, she was safe, heart-whole and prosperous--a beauty who might pick and choose a suitable husband, even though Bourhope, infatuated, threw himself away.

Mrs. Spottiswoode gave a sigh of relief. Failure now would only be comparative.

The dance being over, Bourhope sat down beside Chrissy. No, she turned her head the other way, and he rose up and strolled through the room. But he was soon back in his old place.

He wanted to dance with Chrissy again. She hesitated, grew nervous, and cast her eyes on Mrs. Spottiswoode. He went straight to their hostess, and said, "Mrs. Spottiswoode, you have no objection that I dance this dance again with Miss Chrissy Hunter?"

"None in the world, Bourhope," said Mrs. Spottiswoode, with a spasmodic smile, "why should I?"

"Why, indeed?" he returned, "or every dance? May I tell her so?"

"That is as she and you may agree. You are aware that would appear something serious," she said, trying to laugh.

"I will take the consequences," he significantly assured her, and went back and told Chrissy so, and then he drove her to her inmost citadel, and beat her there.

Other eyes than Mrs. Spottiswoode's were attracted to the pair. Half-a-dozen matrons' heads went wagging significantly; girls whispered and tittered; gentlemen opened their eyes, shaped their mouths as if about to whistle, strolled up and took their observations of the pre-occupied, unconscious couple quite coolly, and then speculated and gossiped.

Mrs. Spottiswoode read these comments as well as what had gone before, and was ready with her magnanimity. It was this which constituted her a truly able tactician. She shifted her tack before the shout of malicious exultation and ridicule could have been raised at her discomfiture. By a dexterous sleight of hand, she shuffled her cards and altered her suit. In a moment Mrs. Spottiswoode was winking and nodding with the matrons interested in the news of the night. She arrested a good-humoured yeoman, and crossed the room on his arm, to express and receive congratulations. "You have found out the secret? Foolish fellow, Bourhope; he cannot conceal his feelings, though their display is premature. I must scold him for exposing himself and her. Poor dear! she is not accustomed to this sort of thing. But I am so delighted--so nice, isn't it? Such an excellent marriage for my cousin Chrissy--a good girl, a very clever girl--such a fortunate beginning for the Blackfaulds family. I often say the first marriage makes or mars a family of girls. It is so lucky that I invited Chrissy for the yeomanry weeks this summer. It is a great deal better than if it had been Corrie, because Corrie can wait," with a careless wave of her hand in the direction in which Corrie moved, deliberately followed by her train. "Corrie has too many admirers to make up her mind speedily, yet she takes it all very quietly. But this is so appropriate--Mr. Spottiswoode's cousin and my cousin--nobody could have planned it better."

She turned round, and heard a blunt booby of a farmer speaking out his mind. She at once took him up--"You would not have thought it? You cannot comprehend what has come over Bourhope, or what he sees in that thin, yellow mite, Miss Hunter of Blackfaulds, even though she were as good as a saint, and as wise as the Queen of Sheba? Oh! come, Balquin, you do not allow sufficient latitude to goodness and cleverness. I tell you, Bourhope has neither eyes nor ears for anybody but that mite; he counts his colourless daisy far before the gayest painted face. He knows that we are remarking on them now, and he is holding his head as high as if he had sought and won a queen. He is right; she will prove a sensible, cheerful wife to him. Bourhope will have the cleverest, best wife in the county, for all your swaggering. And that is something, when a man comes to be old and has an old wife like me. Not old, Balquin? away with you. I wish the Provost heard you. Do you think to flatter me because I am in spirits about my cousin's match? No, it is not lost that a friend gets, Balquin."

The public of Priorton did not know whether most to admire Mrs. Spottiswoode's diplomacy, or this rare instance of poetic justice.

DIANA.

I.--AN UNDERTAKING.

"He will not last ten years' time, Die; and then you will be rich and independent--the lady of Ashpound."

"Don't mention it, sir, unless you mean to tempt me to commit murder next."

The speakers in the old drawing-room of Newton-le-Moor, in the south country, thirty years ago, were Mr. Baring and his daughter Diana. He was a worn and dissipated-looking man, with a half-arrogant, half-base air--implying a whole old man of the world of a bad day gone by. He was flawless in his carving, his card-dealing, his frock-coat and tie: corrupt to the core in almost everything else. She was a tall, full-formed woman, in her flower and prime, with a fine carriage and gait, which rendered it a matter of indifference that she wore as plain and simple a muslin gown as a lady could wear. Her hair was of the pale, delicate, neutral tint which the French call _blond-cendré_, a little too ashen-hued for most complexions. It was not wavy hair, but very soft and pure, as if no atmosphere of turmoil and taint had ruffled or soiled it. It made Miss Baring's fresh, clear complexion a shade too bright in the carmine, which took off the greyness of the flaxen hue and relieved the cold and steel-like gleam in her grey-blue eyes. The features of the face were fine and regular, like Mr. Baring's; but instead of the handsome, aristocratic, relentless aquiline nose, which was the most striking feature in the gentleman's face, the lady's was a modified Greek nose, broad enough at the base slightly to spoil its beauty but largely to increase its intellectual significance.

The "he" of the conversation, who was not to last ten years, was Gervase Norgate of Ashpound--a poor, impulsive, weak-willed, fast-living young neighbouring squire. Unluckily for himself, he had been early left his own master, and had ridden post-haste to the dogs ever since. Suddenly he had taken it into his muddled head to pull up in his career, and, if need be, to chain and padlock, hedge and barricade himself with a wife and family, before Ashpound should be swallowed up by hungry creditors, and he had hurried himself into a forlorn grave.

Mr. Baring was willing to let him off as a pigeon to be plucked, and to use him instead as an unconscious decoy-duck in getting rid of Die; not that Mr. Baring had an unnatural aversion to his daughter, but that she was a drag upon him both for the present and the future. But Die, after one night's reflection, accepted Gervase Norgate to escape worse evil, having neither brother nor sister nor friend who would aid her. What Die did on that night; whether she merely "slept on the proposal," like a wise, well-in-hand, self-controlled woman; whether she outwatched the moon, plying herself with arguments, forcing herself to overcome her deadly sick loathing at the leap, nobody knows. If Die had learned anything worth retaining, in the shifts and shams of her life, it was perfect reticence. The result was that Gervase Norgate was coming to woo as an accepted wooer at Newton-le-Moor on the evening of the summer day when Mr. Baring confidentially assured the bride that the bridegroom would not last ten years.

Newton-le-Moor was what its name suggested, an estate won from the southern moors by other and worthier adventurers than John Fitzwilliam Baring. In his hands the place was drifting back to the original moorland. Everything, except the stables and kennels, had been suffered to go to wreck. The house was of weather-streaked white stone, in part staring and pretentious, in part prodigal and vagabondish. The drawing-room of Newton-le-Moor, like most drawing-rooms, was a commentary--more or less complete--on the life and character of its owner. If it did not represent all his practices and pursuits--his repudiation of just claims and obligations; his sleeping till noon and waking till morning, and faring sumptuously at his neighbours' expense; his fleecing of every victim who crossed his false door by borrowing, bill-discounting, horse-dealing, betting, billiards, long and short whist, and brandy-drinking--at least it painted one little peculiarity of John Fitzwilliam Baring very fairly. Not one accessory which could contribute to his comfort and enjoyment was wanting, from the exceedingly easy chair for his back, to the alabaster lamp for his eyes, and the silver pastile-burner for his nose. On the other hand, there was scarcely an article that had no special reference to John Fitzwilliam Baring which was not in the last stages of decay.

On this evening, before Gervase Norgate came up with her father from the dining-room, where he might sit too long, considering who was waiting him, Diana had her tea-table arranged, and sat down behind it as if to do its honours. She showed no symptoms of discomposure, unless that her rose-colour flickered and flushed in a manner that was not natural to it; yet she had so entrenched herself, that when Gervase Norgate entered, with an irregular, unsteady step, although as nearly sober as he ever was, she could not be touched except at arm's length, and by the tips of the fingers, over which he bowed.

Mr. Norgate was not in his flower and prime. He was not above a year or two Miss Baring's senior; but his whole being had suffered eclipse before it reached maturity, though he still showed some remains of what might have been worth preserving. His physique had been what no word interprets so fitly as the Scotch word "braw,"--not huge and unwieldy in size and strength, but manly and comely. His shoulders were still broad, though they slouched. His hand and arm were still a model, somewhat wasted and shaken, of what in muscular power and lightness a hand and arm should be. His dark brown hair, dry and scanty at five-and-twenty, still fell in waves. His eyes, dulled and dimmed, were still the kindly, magnanimous, forgiving blue eyes. His mouth had always been a heavy mouth (better at all events than a mean mouth); it was coarse now, but with strange lines of gentleness breaking in upon its tendency to violence. But his carriage, though he was pre-eminently a well-made man, was the attribute most spoilt about him. He had the blustering yet shuffling bearing of a man who is fully convinced that he has gone to the dogs, and it did not alter its expression that he was making an effort to quit his canine associates. Perhaps the effort required to be confirmed before its effects could be seen; perhaps he was not setting about the right way of redeeming himself, after all.

Mr. Baring was pompous in his high breeding--the first gentleman in Europe was pompous also. Mr. Baring brought forward his intended son-in-law as his young friend, and alluded pointedly to the summer evening and its event as an "auspicious occasion." But he was cut short by a frosty glance from Die, and a brief remark that she was not sure that this evening and its party were more auspicious than usual.

Although Miss Baring was a person of very little consequence in her father's house, she acted on Mr. Baring as a drag. Her cold looks inadvertently damped him; and she had a way, which he could not account for in his daughter, of making blunt speeches, like that on the auspicious occasion and on her being left a rich young widow, if Gervase Norgate did for himself smartly. This was discomfiting even to a man who piqued himself on his resources in conversation. Die had uttered twice as many of these abrupt, unamiable, unanswerable rejoinders within these twenty-four hours, since she had accepted Gervase Norgate's hand.

Whatever Mr. Baring thought of the rebuff, he was above exhibiting any sign of his feelings, and no one could have refused him the tribute of consideration for the position of his companions, as he blandly announced that he had the day's 'Chronicle' to read, and begged to be excused for accomplishing the task before post-time. He retired to sip his tea and disappear behind the folds of his newspaper. It was the first evening for a dozen years that he had not handled cue or fingered cards.

Gervase Norgate, assuming his character of a man about to amend his ways, marry, and settle, sat by Die Baring. He noted and summed up the girl's good points, as no man in love ever yet did. She was a finer-looking woman than he had supposed,--one to be proud of as he presented her to his friends as his wife; pity that he had so few creditable friends left now! He could think of none at that moment except his strong-minded old Aunt Tabby, who had some sneaking kindness for him in the middle of her scorn, and his old man, Miles. Die Baring would not tolerate his boon companions--not that he wanted her to tolerate them; she would not suit for his mistress and manager if she did; though where she got her niceness--seeing what her father was up to in cool, barefaced scampishness, in horse-flesh, bones, and pasteboard--he could not tell.--She was a capable woman he was certain, if she got a fair field for her capability. She was clever: anybody with half an eye or an ear might recognize that. And she would want all her cleverness--ay, and her will and temper--for what she would have to do. But she had undertaken the task, and it was not much to the purpose that if she had not been the daughter of a disreputable spendthrift she would doubtless as lief have touched live coals as have submitted to be his wife. Ah, well, it was his luck in his last toss-up, and he had never been lucky before; yet he had never felt so great a reluctance to conclude his engagement of twenty-four hours, and clinch his repentance, as he did at this moment. It was good for him that he stood committed. But why had he not sought out some humble, meek lass, who would still have looked up to him and reckoned him not quite such a reprobate, but believed that there was some good left in him, and liked him a little for himself--not married him to suit her own book and save him for her own sake, if it were possible? Why had he not chosen a simple pet lamb, in place of a proud heifer who scarcely took the trouble to conceal from him how it galled her neck to put it into his yoke? Psha! he would break any poor heart with his incorrigible wildness and beastly sottishness in a month's time. A woman without a heart; a good, hard-mouthed, strong-pulling, well-wearing woman,--honest, and a lady; a handsome, superior woman, and far beyond his deserts, was the wife for him.

Gervase pursued this line of thought; but he spoke to Miss Baring, after a little introductory flourish about the weather, his ride from Ashpound, and the embroidery which she had taken up, in a different strain.

"You have shown a great, I must say an unmerited, trust in me, Miss Baring--Diana: but I mean--I swear I mean to do the best I can for you and myself. I have thought better of the life I have been leading; I shall turn over a new leaf, and be another man if you will help me."

The confession was fatally facile, like most confessions, but it was sincere, and not without its touching element, which, however, did not reach her.

She replied, without being greatly moved, and corrected what might be a slight misconception on his part: "I am quite aware, Mr. Norgate, that you have been rather wild; but since you mean to do better, I am willing to try you and to be your wife."

Diana's candid acquiescence had the same disconcerting influence upon Gervase that her speeches had on her father, unlike as the men were: it struck him dumb when he should have overwhelmed her with thanks. After a while he recovered himself, took heart of grace, and blundered out that he was grateful,--a happy man; would she not say Gervase, when she was having him altogether?

"I suppose I may," acceded Diana, with a hard smile. "There, Gervase--it is not hard to say," as if she were humouring him.

He did not ask for any more favours or rights, but maundered a little on nobody calling him Gervase for many a day except his aunt Tabby, and she contracted it to Jarvie, which had a stage-coach flavour.

"Tell me something about your aunt Tabby. Do you know, I have not visited an aunt since I was a little girl of ten?" This afforded him an opening more naturally and pleasantly, and the two went off on Aunt Tabby instead of accomplishing more courtship, and got on a little better. Diverging from Aunt Tabby to her place, and from her place to Ashpound, they went on with mention of Gervase's factotum, Miles, and discussed capabilities and future arrangements with wonderful common sense.

Mr. Baring swallowed his last gape over his 'Chronicle,' concluded that the couple had surely had their swing of private conversation for one night, and resolved to curtail the courtship to the shortest decorous bounds. So Mr. Baring looked at his watch, and said quite lovingly to Gervase: "My boy, when I do act the family man, I do the thing thoroughly, by supping in my dressing-room at eleven. What! you are off? A pleasant ride to you. You will receive your orders from Die, I fancy, when to report yourself in attendance. To-morrow is it, or next day? Make yourself at home, my dear fellow. Happy to think that you are going to be one of us--a son for me to be proud of. Good-night. God bless you."

Thus the preliminaries to the alliance ended with Gervase bowing again over the tips of Die's fingers. He had not the smallest inclination to raise them to his lips.

"I will do my duty by him," said Diana to herself, when she was in the sanctuary of her own bare room. And what a poor sanctuary it had been! "It may be bad in me to have him, but what can I do? and what can he do, for that matter? If I do my duty by him, surely some good will come of it." Perhaps her imagination was haunted by a garbled version of the text about him who turns a sinner from the error of his ways and covers a multitude of sin.

II.--THE FULFILMENT.

"She's a fine woman the mistress, a rare fine woman; but she's going the wrong way. It's the cart before the horse, and I tell you it's not conformable; and the master, God help him, poor fellow, will never be brought to go at the tail of the cart--never." So ruminated Gervase Norgate's old servant, Miles, pushing back the tufts of ragged red hair on his long head ruefully, as he sat "promiscuous" in what he was pleased to call his pantry at Ashpound, while he contemplated with the eye of the body his chamois skin for what he proudly denominated his silver, and with the eye of the mind the new régime and its ruling spirit.

"She's a fine woman," remarked also of her new niece, Miss Tabitha Norgate, of Redwells. "She's a fine woman, a great deal too good for him; but she oughtn't to have gone and married Jarvie, or to have married anybody, there's the long and the short of it. She ought to have remained single, like me. She was made to stand alone, while he wanted a woman and as many children as she could muster to hang round his neck--the liker a millstone the better,--he won't drown: he could not take the straight road without a weight to ballast him and keep him steady. If he had consulted me, I would have advised him to marry that dawdling, whimpering Susie Lefroy, the widowed daughter of the Vicar, with her unprovided-for orphans. Jarvie might have stepped into a young family at once, and he would have been a kind stepfather--he might have righted himself then. To go and marry a clever, active, handsome, well-born woman like Die Baring. Oh! dear, dear, what folly!"

In spite of her critics, Mrs. Gervase Norgate spared no pains to acquit herself of her obligation, and to discharge her debt at Ashpound. Ashpound was a much more exhilarating residence than Newton-le-Moor. At Newton-le-Moor the desolation of prodigality and immorality was objective and deductive. At Ashpound the desolation was subjective and inductive, a plague-spot within; and although the flush of decay was visible, Gervase would struggle against it to the last. He would make an effort to preserve the pleasant, rambling, mellow brick house, most of it one-storied and draped with jessamine and clematis as old as the building; the belt of ash-trees round the ferny dells of the little park; and the whitewashed offices, in excellent repair; the well cared for cattle and poultry-yard; the amply-stocked, flourishing gardens; the pretty gardener's house and lodge--the prettiest things about the place, as his father had left them to him. To the last Gervase would aim at keeping up the place, to his mother's drawing-room, his father's study, Miles's pantry and cellar, even the modern housekeeper's room, and the maids' gallery, in comfort and pleasantness. Only his own rooms--dining-room, smoking-room, bedroom--had been suffered to show traces of many a brawl and fray. It was as if he had deemed anything good enough for a scapegrace and beast like him, and thought to pay the whole price in his own person. It would not be with his will if any other person, high or low, contributed to his heavy forfeits. And Gervase Norgate's servants, new as well as old, had a pitiful liking for him, a remorseful regard for his interests, even when these clashed with their own. So when Gervase had removed the traces, repaired the damages, and taken the decisive step of forbidding the inroads of his evil associates, Mrs. Gervase Norgate found a peaceful, prosperous-seeming, as well as fair, country home awaiting her.

Neither did Mrs. Gervase Norgate droop or mope; she was alive to every advantage, alert to improve every opportunity. Frankly she praised the house at Ashpound, which she had formerly known at the distance of common acquaintanceship, but now knew in the nearness of home, from garret to cellar. "What a well-seasoned, kindly dwelling you have here, Gervase. How I like the windows opening down to the floors, the creeping plants, the hall window-seats, and the attics with their pigeon-hole bureaux." She made herself familiar with its details, and she flattered its old occupants with the extent of her intimacy and appreciation. She did not let the grass grow beneath her feet in learning and acquiring its owner's habits. Early rising had been one of the good old country habits which had stuck to Gervase. And not a dairymaid at Ashpound was up and abroad at so primitive an hour as its mistress, ready to walk with the Squire to his horses' stalls and paddocks, his cattle sheds, his game preserves, his workpeople in the fields; anywhere but to the sign of the 'Spreading Ash-tree,' in the village of Ash-cum-thorpe, for his morning draught.

"Well-a-day," cried Dolly; "I would not be the mistress, to rise and go to her work afore the stroke of six, and she a fine lady born and bred, for all the hats and feathers, table heads, and carriage-seats in this here world. If I ever have a word to say to Luke Jobling, I know it will be with an eye to a good long lie in the morning when he has gone to his mowing or his reaping. How Madam does it without ever drooping an eyelid, none of us can tell; but they do say the gentlefolks are as strong as steel when they like to put out their strength; happen it is the high living as gives it to them. I know Madam puts us to our mettle here. And lawk! the Squire, he's as restless and lost like as a new weaned calf. Eh! I had liefer have the holding-in of a senseless calf, though I had not Luke to help me with the bars of the gates, than the holding in of a full-grown, whole-witted man. But the poor mistress--them as don't know the rights of a thing calls her saucy--young lady though she be, she do work hard for her place and living, she do, since she has got Master Gervase and Ashpound."

Anticipating her husband's commands, Diana was ever ready to bear him company, to share his engagements and amusements, walking, riding, shooting, fishing, playing billiards, cribbage, bowls, racket, backgammon, draughts, for hours on a stretch; to go abroad attending the market and doing banking business at Market Hesketh, dining out with the Vicar or with any country host save Mr. Baring--Mrs. Gervase Norgate setting her face against the paternal hospitalities--dancing at the county balls as one of the leaders. She did not seem to know what weariness meant. She would trudge whole half-days with him and the keepers, after luncheon, beating the plantations and pacing the turnip-fields to start and bring down birds, and she would be sauntering with him on the terrace and in the park after dinner all the same. She would be in the saddle ten hours during a long day's hunt, as the autumn advanced and the meets assembled, and within an hour of alighting at the door of Ashpound, she would have exchanged muddy bottle-green or Waterloo blue cloth for glistening white satin, and be stepping into the carriage with Gervase to be present at one of their wedding parties.

There was something positively great in the intentness with which the woman pursued her end of the man's salvation; the vigilance with which she ever kept sight of the wounded quarry she was to rescue and to restore. The neighbourhood watched the struggle with interest, admiration, hostile criticism, not very delicate diversion. Only to John Fitzwilliam Baring the struggle was a matter of indifference--rather of repugnance. He would have liked Die to be more feminine and more helpless.

Would Die slacken in her energy and devotion? Would Gervase be able to bear his cure much longer?

Beyond the honeymoon, and with the feeling decidedly growing, Gervase Norgate was gratified by his wife's sacrifice of herself in every respect, and long before he grew accustomed to it and felt easy under it, he was touched by it. He liked her company too, for he was fond of society, and had been lonely since his father and mother died. She was an observant, intelligent woman, high-minded and pure-hearted, and vastly superior to his late satellites. She was eager to suit herself to him, and made herself as free with him as she could be, as far as he knew, with any one. At this season Gervase Norgate was attracted to something warmer, sweeter, more intimate in their intercourse. He enjoyed her quick remarks and shrewd conclusions. He was pleased with, and proud of the new blossoming of her beauty under the combined influences of an open-air life, constant occupation, and a powerful object. He was willing to wait till more tender feelings should awaken between them. It looked as if Gervase Norgate had turned over a new leaf: his cheek lost its dull, engrained red, or its pallor; his lips grew firmer; his eyes clearer and cooler; he raised his head, and threw off something of the slouch of his shoulders and the swing and uncertainty of his walk.

"How well you look in that pretty dress, Diana!" he would say; "I declare you are as brave a figure as any in my Lord's picture-gallery. Let me fetch you a cluster of monthly roses, though I am not fit to hold the candle to you." Or, "Come, Die, let us have a stroll and a smoke in the garden." Or, "Sit still for another game, will you? My hand is just in and my luck beginning. I know you are never tired. Mrs. Gervase, you are a trump--the ace of trumps."

Ignorant spectators might have set them down for a good, happy, well-met young couple, with regard to whom it would be simply and equally appropriate to wish "God bless them."

III.--HAZARD.

Diana did not slacken in her devotion, but there came a limit to the endurance of Gervase. The gleam of success was but the gleam before the overcast.

First, Gervase was conscious of being nettled by the distance which existed between him and Diana. And certainly, to be sensible of his arm being arrested by an unseen obstacle when he thought to put it round his own wife's waist, to collapse in the mere idea of asking her to give him a kiss, never to have felt so fully the dissipated, degraded fool he had been, as he felt then, was not a pleasant sensation. It may sound immoral, but it seemed as if, had Gervase been more depraved, there would have been more hope for him, since he would have appreciated the gulf between him and his guardian less.

Then the old craving returned like a death thirst. The old, wild, worthless, low companions, were cognisant, as if by instinct, of a relapse. Eager to hail its signs, and profit by them, they waylaid him at the 'Spreading Ash,' with "Hey, don't you dare to swallow a single glass in your own village, to give custom to your villager, man?" They waylaid and gathered round him in the market-place of Market Hesketh, with "Well met, Mr. Gervase Norgate. Lord! are you alive still? for we had doubted it. Don't speak to him to detain him, you fellows; don't you see Mrs. Gervase has her eye upon him, and is craning her neck to discover what is keeping him? Off with you, sir, since you are a husband, a reformed rake, and a church-goer. If you had gone and joined the Methodists, you might have been a preacher yourself by this time. Oh! we don't want to spoil sport and balk your good intentions; but, by George, Gervase, we never thought you would have been the man to be tied so tight to a woman's apron-string. You must spare us one more carouse for old friendship's sake, my boy, just to try what it is like again, and hear all the news. Ah! your teeth are watering; come along; Madam is not to swallow you up entirely."

They got him away from his wife, and made him leave her sitting an hour in the carriage, with a pair of young horses pawing and rearing and endangering her very life in the yard of the 'Crown.' They made him send her home without him, and kept him till they had nothing more to say than "Heave the poor devil into a gig, and drive him up to his own door and put him down there. It is the best you can do for him,--the fool was always so easily upset; and it will do for her at the same time--give her something to hold her cursed high white head in the air and turn up her nose for; serve her impudence right for taking it upon her to act as private policeman to Jarvie." They sent him home to her, a beast who had been with wild beasts. They did it for the most part heedlessly, in jollity and jeering; but they did it not the less effectually. The wild beast of sensuality had him again; not one devil, but seven, had entered into him; and reigning king over the others, an insensate devil of cruel jealousy of his wife, of his gaoler, resenting her efforts, defying her pains.

Diana did not take Gervase Norgate's backsliding to her very heart, was not wounded to death by it as if she had loved him. But she did not give him up. She was a tenacious woman, and Gervase Norgate's salvation was her one chance of moral redemption from the base barter of her marriage. She did not reproach him: she was too proud a woman, too cold to him, to goad and sting him by reproaches. They might have served her end better than the terrible aggravation of her silence. She was just too, and she did not accuse him unduly. She said to herself, "He is a poor, misguided fellow, a brute where drink is concerned: when I married him, that was as clear as day. I have no right to complain, though he resume his bad courses." Still she left no stone unturned; she was prepared, as before, to ride and walk and play with him at all hours; she ignored his frequent absences and the condition in which he came back, as far as possible. She abetted old Miles in clearing away, silently and swiftly, the miserable evidences of mischief. She smuggled out of sight, and huddled into oblivion, battered hats, broken pipes and sticks, stopperless flasks, cracked, smoky lanterns--concealing them with a decent, decorous, sacred duplicity even from Aunt Tabby, who trotted across the country on her father's old trotting mare, took her observations, and departed, shaking her head and moralizing on the text, "Cast not your pearls before swine."

Diana sat at her forlorn post in the billiard-room, or by the cribbage-board, or at the piano which Gervase had got for her. She had some small skill to play and sing to him, and was indefatigable in learning the simple tunes and songs he liked. And night after night she was left alone, unapproached, uncalled for; or else Gervase stumbled in from the dining-room or from an adjournment to the village tavern, where he was the acknowledged king and emperor, bemussed, befumed, giddy, hilarious, piteously maudlin, or deliriously furious. She stooped to smile and answer his random ravings and to comply with his demands. If she escaped actual outrage and injury in his house and hers, it was not because she did not provoke him, for there was nothing in his wife which Gervase hated so heartily, resented so keenly, as her refraining from contradicting him. But below the grossness and sin of the poor lout and caitiff there was a fund of sullen, latent manliness and kindness, which held him back from insulting the defenceless woman--for all her pride and purity--who was his wife, just as it had held him back from dallying with and caressing her as his mistress.

The neighbourhood which had furnished both a dress-circle and a pit to witness Diana's spectacle, was not astonished at the fate of the adventure. Its success would have been little short of a miracle, and these were not the days of faith in miracles; so the neighbourhood did not pity Mrs. Gervase Norgate, for she had been foolhardy at the best, and her fortune or misfortune had only been what ought to have been expected. For that matter Mrs. Gervase Norgate would not have thanked the world for its pity, though it had been lavishly vouchsafed.

There was one point on which Diana did not hesitate to contradict Gervase, and persisted in contradicting him. She would not suffer him, if she could help it, to frequent Newton-le-Moor, or to consort with Mr. Baring. For to go to Newton-le-Moor was to go among the Philistines; and lawless as Gervase was in his own person, it should never be with his wife's consent that he should go and be plundered by her own flesh and blood--his errors rendering him but a safer and a surer prey.

Gervase was standing restless and indignant by the low bow-window of his wife's drawing-room, opening on the flower-garden, which had been laid out in their honeymoon, and in which she continued to take pleasure, though the wealth of glowing autumn geraniums and verbenas had given place to the few frosted winter chrysanthemums. It was but the middle of the day, and he had risen and had his cup of tea laced with brandy and crowned with brandy, so that the jaded man was comparatively fresh, but irritable to the last nerve, each jarring nerve twanging like harpstrings, sending electric thrills of vexation and rage over his whole body at the cross of every straw.

Diana, who had been up and busy for hours, was sitting at her desk; her brow, whatever cares lurked behind it, unruffled and white; a seemly, reasonable, refined woman, aggrieved every day she lived, but scorning to betray a knowledge of the grievance.

"Don't go to Newton, above all by yourself, Gervase," the wife was entreating, gravely and earnestly. "I am afraid my father may take the opportunity of trying to get money from you. He has entered horses for the Thorpe stakes: he will seek to make you enter them, and you told me yourself May and Highflyer were not fit to run this year. Or he will seek to lead you into some other transaction in horse-flesh, or have you into the house to play billiards and remain to dinner and cards all night, and there is always high play at Newton. My father is a needy man, and needy men are tempted to be unscrupulous; at least his code implies few scruples, where the letter of the laws of honour is complied with."

"It comes ill off your hand to say so," observed Gervase harshly. Undoubtedly he spoke no more than the truth, and such a life as Gervase Norgate's was not a school for magnanimity.

Die winced a little; and she was a woman whose fair cheek so rarely blushed, that her blushing was like another woman's crying. Die never cried; Gervase Norgate had never wrung a tear from her, or seen her shed a tear.

"Well, it was hard for me to say it," she admitted, with an accent of reproach in her equable tones; "but there the wrong and the shame are, and I owe it to myself and to you to warn you."

"I wonder how much I owe your being here to Newton-le-Moor being little better than a not very reputable gambling-house," exclaimed Gervase rudely.

She looked at him with her wide-open eyes, as if she had been struck, but did not care to own the blow.

"It was not to much profit where you were concerned," he continued, in an infatuation of brutality; "it did not get you so much as a pocket-handkerchief, or a flower-garden like that down there, or," glancing round him, "trumpery hangings and mirrors, and a new gown or two, or any other of the miserable trash for which women sell themselves."

She neither spoke nor stirred.

He had worked himself into a blindness of rage, in which he could see nothing before him but the possibility of moving her, of breaking down and destroying her calm front.

"And I wonder how much you owe your being here to my being a prodigal clutching at any respite? You may well come down lightly on my faults, Madam; they have made you the mistress of Ashpound in the present, and won for you its widow's jointure in the future. If I had known all beforehand, I might not have encumbered myself in vain. As it is, I do not think it becomes you to lecture me on keeping company with your own father."

She got up and left the room.

It was time, when all was lost, even honour. If he had not been himself, she might have passed over his taunts with simple shame and disgust; but given, as they were, when she held that he knew what he was saying--as a proof that he had not a particle of respect and regard for her after their months of wedlock, they were a certain indication of his ruin and her reward.

IV.--THE LAST THROW.

"Poor Mrs. Gervase Norgate, she must have been so put about to have to go away with her husband last night. How the scamp got into the drawing-room I cannot tell; but he could do nothing but lean against the wall: he could not have bitten his fingers to save his life. She did not show her mortification unless by going away immediately. A wonderful amount of countenance has that poor young woman; but I take it she will not go out with him again if she can help it--and she need not, she need not, Lady Metcalfe. I can tell you he shall not be asked within my doors again; but I shall be very glad if you will always remember to send her a card, poor thing: she can go out without him, it must come to that eventually. It is not a mere kindness; she is really a credit and an ornament to your parties, to the county set altogether. But the sooner she learns to go out without him, and keep him in the background, the better for all parties. She has the command of a good income still, with a very tolerable jointure behind it, and Ashpound is a pretty place; not a fine place, like my lord's, but a very pretty place for a sensible woman's management and enjoyment."

One of Gervase Norgate's oldest neighbours, a fussy but good-natured, middle-aged baronet, pronounced this judgment.

There was nothing left for Diana but to resign Gervase to his fate, and gather up the gains which were left her. The most impartial authorities decided so. The gains would have sufficed for many a woman. Mrs. Gervase Norgate had comparative riches, after the cash scramble in which she had been brought up. Gervase had not succeeded in wasting above one-third of his fortune, and would doubtless end his career before he made away with the whole. Mrs. Gervase was the mistress of Ashpound, and most people would have valued it as what newspapers describe as a most desirable residence, a most eligible investment. If she ever had a child--a son, though she shuddered at the idea,--he would be the young Squire, the heir of Ashpound. In the meantime, Gervase Norgate was not a churl: he did not dream of stinting his wife in her perquisites, though he was not fond of her, and they now no longer lived comfortably together. She might have out his mother's carriage every day, or she might have another built for her, and drive it with a pair of ponies if she chose; she had a well-bred, fine-mounted, thin-legged, glossy-coated saddle-horse kept for her sole use, and she might have a second bred and broken for her any year she liked. She could even employ her own discretion in the income to be spent in the housekeeping. Ready money was becoming short with him; but his sense of her rights, and his faith in her prudence, had not failed. She had only to draw on his banker or agent to have her draught honoured. Whatever sums she might devote to her personal pleasures, her prodigal husband would not call in question. She might indulge in fine clothes, recherché jewellery, embellishments and ornaments for her rooms; she might take up art or literature, or heaths, or melons, or poultry, or flannel petticoating and soup-making for the poor (Sunday-schools and district visiting were hardly in fashion), and pursue one, or other, or all, for occupation and amusement, without impairing her resources; and she claimed a very respectable circle of friends as Mrs. Gervase Norgate, though she had been friendless, and getting always more friendless, as Miss Baring. The world had put its veto on the risk of her marriage with Gervase Norgate, in so far as its excusable element--the reformation of Gervase Norgate--was concerned; but with commendable elasticity it had allowed itself to be considerably influenced by the advantages which the marriage had obtained and secured for Diana, as well as by her conduct in their possession, and had awarded her the diploma of its esteem. A handsome, ladylike, sensible, well-disposed, sufficiently-agreeable, though quiet young matron, almost too wise and forbearing for her years, was its verdict. It was wonderful how well she had turned out, considering how she had been exposed; for every one knew John Fitzwilliam Baring, and how little fitted he was for the care of a motherless daughter. The more tender-hearted and sentimental world began to look upon Mrs. Gervase Norgate's bad husband, whom she had married in the face of his offence, as one of her merits,--a chief merit, to make of her a popular victim and martyr, no matter that she was not naturally constituted for the _rôle_, was not frank enough for popularity, not meek enough for martyrdom.

Even Miss Tabitha, who had still a friendly feeling for the culprit, had nothing to say against Mrs. Gervase, except that she was too good for him. Poor Miles listened wistfully for his master's reeling step, and went out in the night air, risking his rheumatism, for which Mr. Gervase had always cared, making sure that the old boy had a screen to his pantry, and shutters to his garret. He watched lest his master should make his bed of the cold ground and catch a deadly chill; caring for the besotted man, when he found him, with reverence and tenderness, as for the chubby boy who had bidden so fair to be a good and happy man, worthy of all honour, when Miles had first known him as his young master. Miles resented feebly the perishing of the forlorn hope of a rescue, and muttered fatuously the cart had been put before the horse, and the reins taken out of the whip hand, and that'd never do. What could come of the unnatural process but a crashing spill?

Diana could not accept the solution. Nineteen women out of twenty, who had acted as she had done, would have taken the compensations, perhaps been content with the indemnifications of her lot; but Diana was the twentieth. Whether the cost of his mercenary marriage was far beyond what she had estimated it, she lost heart and hope and heed of the world's opinion, and was on the high road to loss of conscience, from the moment she was convinced that Gervase Norgate was lost.

Diana gave up going into the society which was so willing to welcome her, which thought so well of her. She relinquished all pride in personal dignity and propriety, as she had never done when she had locked her doors to shut out the jingling rattle of the bones, and, occasionally, the curses, not loud but deep, which broke in upon the repose of the long nights at Newton-le-Moor. She ceased to exert herself to regulate the expenditure of the house, to preserve its respectability, to wipe out the signs of its master's ruin. Old Miles might strive to keep up appearances, but his mistress no longer aided and abetted him. It had become a matter of indifference to Mrs. Gervase whether the dragged carpet, the wrenched-down curtain, the shattered chair, were removed or repaired, or not: she took no notice.

By the time Ashpound was budding in spring, Mrs. Gervase Norgate had fallen away, and changed rapidly for the worse, to the disappointment and with the condemnation of her acquaintances. She lay in bed half the morning, dawdled over her breakfast, and trailed her way from place to place, ageing too, with marvellous celerity.